At my school in the Village of Grass Lake, there is a
graduation ceremony where every kindergartener gets a certificate, walks across
a small bridge, and declares what they want to be when they grow up. My name
was called and I gaily skipped to the principal, accepted my roll of paper,
walked to the middle of the bridge and proudly said, “when I grow up, I want to
be an artist.” I was the only child at my school to say that, so I have always
been different. Since I can remember, I have believed art is life.
Most of my work can be connected to either a
fantastical or fairytale type idea or the feelings of aggression and
defensiveness. Each of these paths of creating comes from different areas of my
life. At some point in my life, I realized I had lost touch with my childhood
and the spirit I had at those ages. Much of my work is lighthearted as a child
would be or darker showing the loss I feel.
Most of my inspiration comes from sleep. Each night as
I am falling asleep, I focus my mind on the project facing me. Just before
sleep approaches, my mind enters this clear state with access to all of my
creativity. Even as sleep takes over, I dream about my ideas and wake up with a
clear image of what I plan to do. I usually cannot get my work exactly as it is
in my head, but I use the mistakes to make beautiful things.
Currently,
I am working with spikes. I usually make bronze spikes, but I have also made
fur spikes and an eight-foot spike out of foam and plaster. While taking a
psychology class, my professor gave a lecture about shapes in doodles and their
significance in the psyche. She told us triangles were considered “aggressive.”
I realized much of my doodling consists of angular shapes indicating
aggression. I started with small spikes that came to represent a defense of
some kind and ended with giant spikes showing how aggressive a shape can
actually be.
My
work changes as I obsess over new thoughts that fill my head for weeks at a
time. Art is the outlet I use to understand the world and to understand
myself.